Thames & Kosmos - Anno 1800 - Ubisoft Entertainment - Competitive Strategic Board Games for Adults & Kids, Ages 12+ - 680428

Product Information

But what if you don’t have the right Industry Tiles on your Island to complete a card? What if you can’t Expand to get new Tiles onto your Island? If only there was a way to- (oh, wait, there is)! Let’s Make A Trade By the time you’ve played a few games, you could probably get a job in logistics somewhere. Supply chain management is what we’re dealing with here, it’s what all the cool kids are into. What starts off as a game of generating a few basic goods, slowly snowballs into an intricate machine, fine-tuned to produce those all-important victory points. These VPs come from a few different sources, including exploring the Old and New world, and enticing new citizens to your blossoming township. Sandboxes

Similarly, the expansion will change Anno 1800’s endgame. Rather than trying to get rid of your cards to finish the game, you’ll be accumulating ‘endgame points’ through taking various actions.This is the most tetchy part of set-up. There’s 35 different Industry Tiles, and two of each. During set-up, give a colour to each player, set it up together in half the time.)

Wallace says he designed the expansion as a “gamer’s game” that “bumps the complexity level up, but really reduces the amount of randomness in the game.”

I Like It

Anno 1800 offers a lot of fun, even though sometimes it may feel like you are just another machine in the middle of all this industrial production that is going on. It has not the same depth of other 2-hour games, what can be good or bad depending on your playstyle. The art is not the greatest, but the components quality is fair enough, even though workers are as simple as coloured cubes. All in all, it is a game worth playing, but it is just not there yet to be another Marin Wallace’s masterpiece.

I have enjoyed my plays of this so far, and I can definitely see the appeal that this will have for those who like longer and more complex games. It will also appeal to those who have like civ-building games as it has a similar feel. For me, I loved the first hour or so, but then as the game ground on, it moved down into the “I like it” territory as I felt it went on a bit longer than I would have liked. Again, this may be more my personal preference towards games under two hours as the pacing of the game seems to work fine for what it wants to do. I’d definitely still play it again if asked. What happened to Kev is what happens to a lot of first-time players of Anno 1800: they spend too much time building up their engine, instead of just speeding towards the ending by fulfilling their hand of cards. There are no rounds or phases during the game. The only game-ending condition is when a player plays the last card from their hand. That might sound like a definite line in the sand, but it isn’t, as you’re constantly drawing and playing cards. Far from being an easily observable event on the horizon, triggering the end of the game takes some deliberate planning. The fact that the end of the game is player-driven led to some concerns from the community, me included. If playing cards is how to score points, and playing your final card ends the game, why wouldn’t you just keep drawing and playing to amass a crazy number of points? Fans of the PC game will immediately recognise the character artwork In some ways, it’s a valid concern. You can play that way if you want to, but the reality of it is that this doesn’t really happen. Sure, I’ve seen some games dragged-out longer than necessary, but the worry about it turning into a never-ending slog doesn’t materialise. There comes a point where you are happy with what you’ve created, and if that doesn’t happen for you, it will for someone else, and the game ends anyway. DiscoverySee that bottom row of your Island? The water? You start the game with a modest fleet of three ships. Each player takes two Trade Tokens, one to place on their first two ships. Plus, you get one Exploration Token, to sit on your third ship. The Tokens match the symbol on the ship. Above that, on the shoreline, you have one ‘Strength 1’ Shipyard. Inland, you all have the same 10 default Buildings, which are goods production spaces.